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| Photo: Mikhail Klimentyev/Zuma Press |
Moscow is in the process of demoting itself from putative great power to sick man of Eurasia
World War II revisionist historian Phillips O’Brien has been fighting the good fight lately on Twitter, upholding the thesis of his 2015 magnum opus, “How the War Was Won.” To wit, Russia’s contribution to victory in the world war was relatively minor after all. German weapons and materiel consumed in battle on the eastern front calculate out to a modest fraction of those destroyed or prevented from being created by the Western air and naval war against Germany’s productive capacity.
He turns on its head an old belief that allied bombing was ineffective because Nazi production for a time continued to grow in absolute terms. Mr. O’Brien suggests the effect on potential output is what matters. The Germans apparently agreed. According to Mr. O’Brien’s figures, the lion’s share of resources went to the Luftwaffe and German navy even at the height of the ground campaign in the east.
Russia today possesses a small fraction of NATO’s productive capacity and will not be able to make up the gap, never mind neither’s being under direct military threat. One close similarity with Hitler, however, is the disappearance of any prospect of gain from the war Mr. Putin started in Ukraine, which offers now only variations on loss and disaster. The war continues only to spare Mr. Putin a loss of face from admitting a truth that is obvious to 100% of the people around him.
Which brings us to the question of negotiations, faintly in the air since the prisoner trade for a U.S. women’s basketball star in early December. Mr. Putin desperately needs talks if they can get him out of the mess he created. They can’t. He waited too long and now it appears nothing can seriously alter the outcome.
By the same token, if you were Ukraine’s president and able to play a subtle game, you might actually sign a cease-fire that concedes for now a Russian presence on Ukrainian soil with a certain jaunty confidence. That’s because, from the moment the shooting stops, your economy, your military capacity, your social cohesion go straight up, kindled not only by a powerful sense of victory and national achievement, but by an in-pouring of U.S. and European aid seeking to share the victory and express gratitude for the peace. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Photo:National Security and Defense Council |
Ukraine is now entering the penultimate, offensive stage of the war, the Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, wrote on Facebook on Jan. 6.
He said the world was changing its view of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine – “from a guerrilla movement, to (fighting for) victory.”
Danilov divided the war into four stages and noted the main weapons that the allies were supplying to Ukraine for each stage:
- January 2022 – guerrilla war (the NLAW anti-tank missiles, the Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, the Javelin anti-tank missiles);
- June 2022 – defensive and counteroffensive war (the HIMARS multiple launch rocket system, the M777 howitzer, the Harpoon missiles, the GMLRS projectiles, Excalibur, the PzH 2000 self-propelled gun, the IRIS self-propelled gun, the CAESAR self-propelled howitzer, the Krab self-propelled howitzer;
- 2023 – offensive war (the Bradley and Marder infantry fighting vehicles, the Bastion armored personnel carrier, the AMX-10 RC armored vehicles or “wheeled tanks,” the Patriot air defense system, “and much more, less public and not public at all.”
According to the official, the fourth stage will be a “war of justice and retribution.” --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to +++++relevant+++++ and related stories:
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